Given the current market demand, publicity and values being paid for Qianlong pieces, appraisers should become familiar with the marks of the period. Dr. Rosenzweig journal article is not only timely, but very informative when it comes to identifying Qianlong marks.
Dr, Rosenzweig writes
Unfortunately for the appraiser, the museum professional, and the collector, there are also works created not as an homage to an earlier period (but clearly and honestly a later production), but works which are outright later forgeries of earlier works, produced to deceive - which they can and do. How might they be detected? A high level of connoisseurship must be applied. For example, if a jade is in the form of a Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) jade (Client: “It is exactly like this picture in this famous book, so I know it is genuine”…), but is fashioned from a source of jade material not known to have been discovered until 1950; that is a clue. If the Ming-looking lacquerwork is a plastic, with mold marks, rather than a natural substance; that is a clue to its later manufacture. If an “ivory” has mold marks, once again there is a problem! If the “ivory” is not ivory but cow bone, there is a problem. If a “bronze” which appears to be Shang (ca. 1600-1000 BCE) is heavier than a genuine Shang bronze of comparable size would be and gleams bright gold through wear in a surface patination treatment, this is probably a later brass. If a ceramic bowl (again, looking “just like a picture”) is far heavier than one would expect from a genuine work, it is probably not genuine, and certainly not later imperial. And so on.
The auction house designation “style” is safe. Yes, the work is in the style. The auction house designation “mark” is safe; yes, it is so marked. It is the combination term, “mark and of the period” which can so often be problematic, because – in spite of all the disclaimers in the catalogue small print – it does indicate that the auction house has ascertained that indeed there is a mark, and has further judged the work to be genuinely of that period “in our qualified opinion.” An appraiser must be a researcher, an authenticator (though some would say we are not to do so), and also able to withstand the client’s triumphant statements about his or her own dating research. For example, the client took the work to a nearby Chinese restaurant and the owner was able to read the mark, and said it was “very old,” or the client went to the public library and found the mark in a book, so certainly it must be genuine.
Reign mark authentication has been a problem for centuries. Experienced scholars and auction house experts have liked to point to irregularities in the writing style (one line widens where it shouldn’t and other issues, clearly a specialized area of knowledge), and this can still be done with obviously fake marks. No genuine imperial production should look unrefined. A problem at present in the field of Ming and Qing porcelains is that many workshops on the mainland (the Qingdezhen area in particular) are laser-copying on to new works marks from acknowledged genuine older works, then covering the newly-minted marks with a brand-new traditional-formula glaze. You cannot chip off the mark, as one can with the spurious orange-red overglaze enamel marks found on so many “style of” nineteenth century works. It is a “genuine” mark, just not original to this piece. Deception is common, and detection is difficult.
Probably the most widely seen mark in later Chinese art is the reign mark of the Qianlong Emperor. With brilliant workshops producing many works of the highest quality, if perhaps overwrought taste by today’s standards, his era is renowned for its artistic prowess. Later workshops, either as homage but more typically as deception, often wish to indicate that their productions come from this glorious period. There is no question but that an appraiser’s experience with handling or observing up close many genuine reign-marked works, feeling their heft, studying their enameling, observing the skill in gilding, viewing the reverse of the work, which might not have been illustrated in a book, to see if it holds up to the front, which was illustrated, etc. is essential to determining the degree to which a mark may be judged genuine (“mark and of the period”) or is simply a mark (“mark”).
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